I explore the changing use of political violence by the new Latin American military regimes, specifically post-1976 Argentina with comparative analysis towards Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, as well as by those who protested military authoritarianism during the Dirty War and Operation Condor. These military dictatorships adopted aggressive anti-communist ideologies and displayed them through internal, covert violence. In this study, I adopt definitions of the 'spectacle of violence' and the 'spectacle of absence' that seek to explore the politics of diplomacy behind violent acts that have informed the processes of staging, or hiding, both the methods and outcome of inflicted violence. Geopolitics of the post-human rights legislation era and the Argentine military’s perception of a failed judicial system fostered the institutionalization of a new violent performance, the spectacle of absence, in opposition to the guerrillas' application of the public spectacle of violence. My analysis of violent spectacles within Argentina and their reception at home and abroad displays the various meanings transmitted and received through the medium of political violence as performance.

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O presente trabalho visa abordar as características do sistema político mexicano que permitiram o passo silencioso de um Estado com traços autoritários para um contrainsurgente. O sistema político mexicano, derivado da Revolução popular iniciada em 1910 e da criação do Partido Revolucionario Institucional(PRI), propiciou uma cultura política que fortaleceu a figura presidencial. Esta extrapolava as atribuições constitucionais e se legitimava tanto na política interna como na externa através do \"nacionalismo revolucionário\". Os governos de Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría e José López Portillo (1964-1982) estão marcados pela crise hegemônica evidenciada na radicalização das organizações de esquerda. Entre outros motivos, pelo esgotamento do modelo econômico desenvolvimentista, pela crise de representatividade do partido e falta de espaços para a participação política, pela corrupção das instituições e a escalada de violência do Estado contra a oposição. Nesses dezoito anos localizamos uma transformação nas formas de violência institucional pela assimilação da Doutrina de Segurança Nacional e a Doutrina Contrainsurgente dos Estados Unidos da América, por exemplo, na consolidação de grupos paramilitares pagos pelo Estado e treinados em norte-américa. O nacionalismo revolucionário possibilitou então que a submissão à ideologia estadunidense não fosse explícita, gerando dinâmicas repressivas (qualitativamente) similares às vivenciadas nas ditaduras latino-americanas. Ainda que o México tenha sido considerado uma democracia exemplar alheia às guerras sujas e aos golpes de Estado que comoveram o continente na segunda metade do século XX. O objetivo deste trabalho é salientar os elementos contraditórios existentes entre o discurso público, analisado a partir dos informes presidenciais, e o discurso elaborado desde os órgãos de segurança, isto é, os relatórios da Dirección Federal de Seguridad. Nessas contradições podemos ir avaliando as formas de alinhamento às doutrinas de segurança estrangeiras. / The main objective of this Master\'s project is to address the characteristics of the Mexican political system that allowed the silent step from a state with authoritarian traits to a counterinsurgent one. The Mexican political system, derived from the popular revolution that began in 1910 and from the creation of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, maintained a political culture that strengthened the figure of president. This went beyond the powers permitted by the constitution and legitimized both internal and external policies through \"revolutionary nationalism.\" The governments of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, and José López Portillo (1964-1982) are marked by a hegemonic crisis seen in the radicalization of leftist organizations. Other motives for this shift include: the depletion of the developmentalist economic model, the crisis of representation in the party and a lack of spaces for political participation, the corruption of institutions, and the escalation of state violence against the opposition. In these eighteen years, a transformation occurs in the form of institutional violence through the assimilation of the National Security Doctrine of the United States; for example, the consolidation of paramilitary groups paid by the state and trained by northern neighbors. Revolutionary nationalism then allowed the non-explicit submission to American ideology, generating results (qualitatively) similar to those experienced in the repressive dynamics of Latin American dictatorships. Still, Mexico has been considered an exemplary democracy, despite dirty wars and coups that shocked the continent in the second half of the twentieth century.The aim of this study is to highlight the contradictory elements between the public discourse, analyzed from the presidential reports, and the discourse developed from the security organs, in other words, the reports of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad. These contradictions we can to evaluated the alignment of forms to foreign security doctrines.

O presente trabalho visa abordar as características do sistema político mexicano que permitiram o passo silencioso de um Estado com traços autoritários para um contrainsurgente. O sistema político mexicano, derivado da Revolução popular iniciada em 1910 e da criação do Partido Revolucionario Institucional(PRI), propiciou uma cultura política que fortaleceu a figura presidencial. Esta extrapolava as atribuições constitucionais e se legitimava tanto na política interna como na externa através do \"nacionalismo revolucionário\". Os governos de Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría e José López Portillo (1964-1982) estão marcados pela crise hegemônica evidenciada na radicalização das organizações de esquerda. Entre outros motivos, pelo esgotamento do modelo econômico desenvolvimentista, pela crise de representatividade do partido e falta de espaços para a participação política, pela corrupção das instituições e a escalada de violência do Estado contra a oposição. Nesses dezoito anos localizamos uma transformação nas formas de violência institucional pela assimilação da Doutrina de Segurança Nacional e a Doutrina Contrainsurgente dos Estados Unidos da América, por exemplo, na consolidação de grupos paramilitares pagos pelo Estado e treinados em norte-américa. O nacionalismo revolucionário possibilitou então que a submissão à ideologia estadunidense não fosse explícita, gerando dinâmicas repressivas (qualitativamente) similares às vivenciadas nas ditaduras latino-americanas. Ainda que o México tenha sido considerado uma democracia exemplar alheia às guerras sujas e aos golpes de Estado que comoveram o continente na segunda metade do século XX. O objetivo deste trabalho é salientar os elementos contraditórios existentes entre o discurso público, analisado a partir dos informes presidenciais, e o discurso elaborado desde os órgãos de segurança, isto é, os relatórios da Dirección Federal de Seguridad. Nessas contradições podemos ir avaliando as formas de alinhamento às doutrinas de segurança estrangeiras. / The main objective of this Master\'s project is to address the characteristics of the Mexican political system that allowed the silent step from a state with authoritarian traits to a counterinsurgent one. The Mexican political system, derived from the popular revolution that began in 1910 and from the creation of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, maintained a political culture that strengthened the figure of president. This went beyond the powers permitted by the constitution and legitimized both internal and external policies through \"revolutionary nationalism.\" The governments of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, and José López Portillo (1964-1982) are marked by a hegemonic crisis seen in the radicalization of leftist organizations. Other motives for this shift include: the depletion of the developmentalist economic model, the crisis of representation in the party and a lack of spaces for political participation, the corruption of institutions, and the escalation of state violence against the opposition. In these eighteen years, a transformation occurs in the form of institutional violence through the assimilation of the National Security Doctrine of the United States; for example, the consolidation of paramilitary groups paid by the state and trained by northern neighbors. Revolutionary nationalism then allowed the non-explicit submission to American ideology, generating results (qualitatively) similar to those experienced in the repressive dynamics of Latin American dictatorships. Still, Mexico has been considered an exemplary democracy, despite dirty wars and coups that shocked the continent in the second half of the twentieth century.The aim of this study is to highlight the contradictory elements between the public discourse, analyzed from the presidential reports, and the discourse developed from the security organs, in other words, the reports of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad. These contradictions we can to evaluated the alignment of forms to foreign security doctrines.

This thesis discusses how certain societies (Germany, Israel, and Argentina) that have been involved in two documented cases of genocide in the 20th Century -- one that was the source for and falls within the United Nations Treaty definition of genocide (the Holocaust), and one that does not (the Dirty War in Argentina) --have dealt with these events in their recent past. In dealing with these issues, the thesis employs the analysis of genocide developed by the Argentine scholar, Daniel Feierstein, who has proposed that all genocides progress through a series of steps that first create what he calls a "negative otherness" to the victims of the genocide, that then isolates and debilitates the victim group, and that ultimately leads, as a penultimate (not final) step, to the physical annihilation of the victims of the genocide. Feierstein's most novel and provocative contribution to the study of genocide, however, is his concept that there is an additional and final step -- which he calls the threat of “symbolic realization” -- that will actually take place in society after the killing or physical annihilation has been completed and the historical order of things has been restored. In Feierstein’s view, the purpose of genocide is to use the technologies of power of the state against the victim group in order to permanently change social relations within the state by excluding and then annihilating the victims of the genocide. For this reason, Feierstein argues that, unless the post-genocide society continues to confront the causes and reality of the genocide as a present and ongoing political and social dynamic in the society, so that the memory and cultural and social presence of the victim group is preserved in an immediate way, the genocide will be realized on a symbolic level in the sense that the change of social relations that the perpetrators of the genocide intended will in fact occur. In the analysis that follows of the issues of assigning culpability, providing reparations, and constructing memorials in post-genocide societies, the thesis argues that, whether consciously articulated or not, what drives the bitter controversy and debates over these matters in post-genocide societies is an underlying fear on the part of victims and victim groups that the significance of what they have suffered and why they have suffered will be lost and forgotten (symbolically realized, in Feierstein’s terminology) in the state's efforts at reconciliation precisely through the process of assigning guilt, awarding reparations, and constructing memorials. Going a step beyond where Feierstein leaves off, the thesis suggests, however, that this sort of symbolic realization is, in fact, an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the process of writing the history of the genocide (or any event) and the detachment, analysis, contextualization, reductiveness, and simplification that history requires.

This study examines how the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan responded to the widespread human rights abuses committed by the Argentine military during the country's Dirty War between 1977 and 1982. The objective is to gain a broader understanding of the policies pursued by both administrations. Under Carter, who brought human rights to the forefront of American foreign policy, Argentina was heavily targeted and sanctioned with the anticipation that such measures would enhance the human rights status in Argentina. Ultimately, such policies resulted in open hostility in bilateral relations, culminating in Argentina's refusal to support Carter's proposed grain embargo on the Soviet Union in 1980. Reagan moved to restore relations until Argentina's invasion of the Falklands in April, 1982. The works of many authors were consulted in conjunction with newspapers, journal articles, government proceedings and declassified documents obtained from the National Security Archives.

Over the last few decades the importance of human rights has increased considerably in international relations. With globalization and democratization, more states and individuals develop concerns about the fundamental rights every human is entitled to; regardless of sex, religion and ethnicity. Latin American countries began obtaining their independence over 200 years ago while progressing into becoming working democracies. Yet, they have been plagued by oscillating authoritarian regimes and social conflicts that constrain and inhibit their hopeful development. The majority of the Latin American states have reached a point where further positive growth was expected; yet human violations have taken a backseat within the government of such countries. The case studies shed light on the three main causes of human right violations in Latin America. These are: the abuse of power by the government and the subsequent changes to the constitution to gain further control and authority; the government's inadequacy in dealing with subversive groups; and the deficiency of subsequent democratic governments to bring past offenders to trial for crimes against humanity while giving pardons to those who did face trial. By understanding why the violation of human rights occurred, future infringements can be avoided and fundamental rights will be awarded to all humans.

This article explores the short but intense history of the word terruco, a colloquial term which is used as a substitute for terrorist. In particular, the article aims to show that the use of terruco as an insult, although originally aimed at members of groups in arms, contributed decisively during the years of the dirty war and even in recent times, to stigmatize sectors of the Peruvian population, including defenders of human rights, relatives of those detained and other victims of political violence, and in general persons of Indian origin. Its frequent use in torture sessions and episodes of sexual assault added an additional dimension to the connection between the term terruco and generalized forms of abuse and violence which were considered by many Peruvians as necessary and even legitimate during the years of internal armed conflict. / Este artículo explora la breve pero intensa historia de la palabra terruco, un término coloquial que se usa como sustituto de terrorista. En particular, se intenta demostrar que el uso de terruco como un insulto, aunque en principio dirigido a los miembros de los grupos alzados en armas, contribuyó decisivamente, durante los años de la guerra sucia e incluso en tiempos más recientes, a estigmatizar a distintos sectores de la población peruana, incluyendo a defensores de derechos humanos, familiares de detenidos y otras víctimas de la violencia política, y personas de origen indígena en general. Su uso recurrente en sesiones de tortura y en episodios de violación sexual añade una dimensión adicional a la conexión entre el término terruco y la práctica generalizada de formas de abuso y violencia que fueron consideradas, por muchos peruanos, necesarias y hasta legítimas durante los años del conflicto armado interno

Argentina can be defined as a country with a long turbulent history. However, at the turn of the 70's and 80's when the country was under the rule of the military junta clearly stands out from this frame. Under the pretext of fight against subversive elements, the army, the police and the intelligence services committed severe human rights violations against citizens who did not approve of the regime or expressed their dissatisfaction with it. The final outcome of this terror were more than 30 000 disappeared people, commonly called desaparecidos, around 500 illegally adopted children and entire families living in the shadow of their sad past until today. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the extent of knowledge of specific actors of the international community (USA and Chile) about the situation in Argentina and to identify their attitude towards the information coming from a country where human rights violations happened on a daily basis. The conclusion aims to assess whether the governments of these three countries operated in some sort of a trilateral relationship, or whether these crimes were a specific internal issue of Argentina.

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